The Great Disappointment

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Much has been written recently about “The Great Resignation” - the unsettling impact of the pandemic period causing individuals to leave their current jobs in search of something potentially more fulfilling and with a more positive impact on their overall quality of life. 

But in this article I want to focus attention upon a phenomenon that it is probably much more endemic and itself invariably at the root of The Great Resignation. 

We shall call this “The Great Disappointment”… 

In my work all around the world coaching talented individuals to seek out and secure new career roles, I hear many negative stories from these individuals at all levels who have simply lost faith, enjoyment and belief in their current jobs and/or employers. The common theme, expressed in many different ways, is that the employer has failed to live upto and deliver on the expectations that were so positively communicated either at recruitment or in subsequent development discussions.

It is an expressed feeling of disappointment (often profound) because the rhetoric of the employer has more often than not failed to match the reality of the individual’s experience. The pandemic period has simply brought many of these feelings to the surface where previously individuals might have more readily tolerated, suppressed or discounted these emotions. Without doubt the challenging circumstances of the last two years or so has caused many of us to genuinely question how we are spending our time and ask what value we are gaining from the jobs and careers we are pursuing and what choices and sacrifices we are having to make between our work and non-work life.

Expectations and attitudes to employment have changed. And perhaps for the first time in a while such feelings have caused many to make a determined effort to act i.e. to seek out and secure something new and different to bring or restore some sense of greater value or fulfilment in their working lives and provide a more balanced life experience. 

This, of course, is not to say that all individuals are feeling these emotions or that all employers are failing to respond in this regard. Many reputable organisations recognise the need to keep apace with individuals expectations and work really hard to install the policies and practices to ensure that the business is adapting and responding to changing circumstances and individual expectations. Likewise many individuals remain happy and fulfilled in their work and are realistic in acknowledging that this is not a perfect world and to some degree they need to make modest compromises to sustain their livelihoods.  

Sadly, however, it is very apparent that still too many employers have a blindness about the impact of the way they do things on the psychology and well-being of managers and staff who they expect day-in, day-out to deliver great things on their behalf. Sometimes this is an act of denial or lack of awareness; quite often it is more complacency and laziness to respond and nearly always it signifies a failure of leadership. Over time, if this perpetuates, talented individuals become increasingly frustrated and disillusioned with the nature of their work experience and now more than ever are prepared to act on this disappointment. For employers this has profound consequences for the short, medium and long term health of their businesses.

Talented individuals almost always have choices and options about where and how they work - even though sometimes they don’t necessarily either see or exercise these choices. Losing your best employees through sustained disappointment is not only bad for businesses reputation and the ability to sustain growth and innovation, it is also very expensive. The loss of experience, knowledge and skill invested in over a number of years, cannot easily and cheaply be replaced and the more senior the loss from resignation, then the more expensive it gets. Recruitment and onboarding are both very costly processes consuming valuable management time and resources. And where resignations become numerous and regular they can seriously threaten the very heart of the organisation’s commercial well-being.

So what then can we usefully say about how employers should act to dissipate the Great Disappointment and, by so doing, avoid the worst aspects of the Great Resignation. 

The commentary from many experiencing the “Great Disappointment” indicates that there are two key groupings of issues that employers need to address to deal effectively with this challenge.

I will refer to these groupings as “The Brilliant Basics” and “A Values Driven Culture”. 

The Brilliant Basics

Individuals in employment have a very straightforward expectation to be led and managed well. In this context I use the phrase “basics” to characterise the fundamental leadership and management skills and practices, irrespective of industry or sector, that if present will define the quality of an individual’s working experience and if not present will seriously undermine and disappoint the individual. I add the word “brilliant” because it is self-evidently the case that if applied and implemented consistently and to a very high standard, these skills and practices can significantly improve individual commitment, motivation and performance .

Without the presence of the BRILLIANT BASICS it is also the case that investment in other more complex cultural and change initiatives (see second grouping below) will almost certainly fail to deliver a good return. If the foundations are shaky, then more sophisticated initiatives will struggle to have impact. Too often I hear from disappointed individuals that managers in their employing organisations have neglected to adequately build and consistently implement these brilliant basics. 

And this is what I define as the BRILLIANT BASICS:

  • Clear Objective Setting – the ability to agree clear, measurable objectives with individuals and teams linked to wider organisational goals and against which performance and progress will be regularly evaluated.

  • Robust Planning – the ability to put in place effective business and project plans behind these objectives to ensure delivery.

  • Honest Feedback – the ability to provide effective and regular feedback – both motivational feedback (what you value about someone that you want them to do more of) and developmental feedback (what you suggest individuals need to do differently in order to improve their effectiveness)

  • Regular Coaching – the ability to guide, advise and support individuals in fulfilling their personal goals and aspirations or improving their performance.

  • Two-Way Dialogue– the habit and ability to conduct effective, regular and authentic dialogues with individuals on the important issues using the full range of personal communications skills (e.g. rapport building, questioning, listening, summarising & proposing).

  • Delegation – the ability to confidently delegate important tasks to others and using this as an important means for developing an individuals confidence and capability

  • Influencing – the ability to use a variety of different influencing styles and techniques to gain persuade, encourage and commitment from employees to important goals and plans.

  • Team Development – the ability to build a high performing team based upon clarity of shared purpose and success criteria and a focus on meeting stakeholder delivery expectations.

  • Development & Career Planning – the ability to work with individuals to unleash their potential and effectively plan their learning and development using a combination of projects, experiences, coaching, training and self development.

  • Respect for Difference - the outlook and behaviours to ensure all individuals feel respected, valued and included irrespective of background and difference.


NB - this is by no means an exhaustive list of Brilliant Basics, but contains the most oft-cited elements that if lacking or applied inconsistently can lead quickly to loss of faith and commitment by employees. Also a distinction should be drawn between the existence of a process and the skills and behaviours that underline these areas e.g. a business can have a well developed process for say setting objectives, but if managers do not follow this process with skill and diligence, then any positive impact in the eyes of an employee, may well be devalued. In all the areas listed above, it is invariably the behaviours that are most important to success in the eyes of the employee.

EXERCISE

If you are in a managerial role in an organisation, do a very quick evaluation as to how well the Brilliant Basics are applied in your organisation by asking these two questions:

How well, how often and how consistently do I apply each of these skills and behaviours to the individuals who report to me? 

How well, how often and how consistently are each of these skills and behaviours applied to me by my manager? 

And, of course, the degree of overall consistency and behaviours of these regular practices, will be a direct function of how well you and your colleague mangers have prior experience and/or have been trained in these capabilities. 

However …

Even where there is a strong organisational culture of applying these Brilliant Basics, they might not be sufficient alone to reduce the risk of the Great Disappointment taking hold and turning into the Great Resignation. Increasingly individuals are looking for other really important dimensions that will persuade them to join, stay and/or re-commit themselves to an employer. We might describe these as the higher order, values driven aspects of working for an employer and again whilst some of these are not particularly new they have definitely become more important and prominent in people’s thinking since the chastening experience of the pandemic and associated lockdowns. This second grouping we shall define as …

A VALUES DRIVEN CULTURE

These are the most oft cited, deeper and more fundamental areas mentioned by individuals, the absence of which can increasingly cause an individual to question their commitment to their current employer; they also then become the criteria deployed by many for subsequently seeking a new role in a different organisation. They include: 

  • Compelling Vision - the presence of an overarching vision for the organisation, that is exciting, stretching, future focused and is seen to be realistically attainable in a reasonable timescale.

  • Inclusive & Authentic Leadership - a non-hierarchical style of leadership that actively consults and involves people in critical developments, is transparent in decision-making and authentically invests in diversity and difference as a source of innovation and creativity for moving the business forward.

  • Ethical Reputation - high standards of responsible and ethical behaviours in the way that a business deals with all customers, staff, other stakeholders and the communities within which it operates including importantly a trusted process for calling-out behaviours that break or compromise standards.

  • Force for Good - active investment, promotion of and involvement in activities that make a positive contribution and difference to society in general and to valued communities in the organisations sphere of influence. This goes beyond mere PR exercises, typically actively involving employees at all levels in tangible projects of change and improvement.

  • Environmental Responsibility - re-engineering the purpose and processes of the organisation to actively contribute to a more sustainable future; this requires tangible actions not just fine words to go beyond green-washing and act as a role model for change.

  • Innovation and Excitement - in a world where technology is often driving the pace of change, individuals are increasingly looking to work for organisations that generate pace, energy excitement and innovation around the fresh challenges and opportunities ahead.

  • Talent Meritocracy - a genuine interest and value in providing individuals with meaningful growth and fulfilment through varied and interesting projects and assignments and a regular and honest engagement about future opportunities.

  • Family Friendly Enterprise - a progressive policy framework and tolerant leadership behaviours that allow individuals to sustain a balance approached to their work and no-work lives; increasingly embracing aspirations for more working hours flexibility, virtual working and sabbatical opportunities.

  • Leadership Investment - forward looking and progressive organisations recognise two things about leadership. Firstly, that leadership behaviour is rarely neutral in its impact on employee motivations and commitments i.e it either creates a highly positive engaging environment or actively accelerates dissatisfaction and disappointment. Secondly, high quality leadership rarely happens entirely by accident and so a business wishing to have values driven and commitment-winning leaders needs to recruit, promote and develop those who demonstrate the most positive leadership behaviours and potential.

This list is again not intended to be exhaustive and self-evidently is a tough one for any employer to completely live up to. However unless an organisation is progressively investing time and money in consciously and overtly pursuing these wider values based organisation factors, the sharp reality may well be that they are losing the attention and commitment of valued employees who may exercise their choice to seek out these attributes in a competitor business that has already signed up to these wider aspirations. 

EXERCISE

Using the questions below, spend some time evaluating how well-positioned your current organisation is to be considered as a genuine values-based business: 

Where already does your organisation stand in these value-driven areas; what is it already doing positively to satisfy the changing aspirations of individuals in many of these areas. 

Where is your organisation lacking in this regard and where would you say it needs most urgently to improve to keep pace with changing employee aspirations (which may of course be some of your own aspirations) and ...what can I do to influence this?

So in conclusion, do take some time out to think about these issues in your own organisational context. Is your business unknowingly contributing to the Great Disappointment and is this in turn leading to the organisation experiencing high levels of attrition, particularly amongst your most talented individuals? What more could you and your organisation do to counteract levels of disaffection? And where do you stand on all of this - is your organisation living up to your aspirations and expectations or is it now time to seek out a new situation, a new set of challenges in a different enterprise.

I would be very grateful for any comments you might have on this article - e.g. is the the Great Disappointment something you recognise from your own experience? Are there other factors at play that I have not included? What future actions do you foresee that leading organisations will need to take to improve the way they retain, engage and excite their employees. Please either post your comments below, connect with me or drop me an email: tim@brosna-consulting.com

Brosna Career Consulting provides a range of career coaching services for talented individuals including help with i) evaluating career status and options ii) executing a career transition and/or iii) in-situ private coaching. If you would value a confidential introductory discussion on how we might be able to help with your career decisions, please email me: tim@brosna-consulting.com

Tim Chapman

Managing Director

Brosna Career Consulting Ltd

April 2022